If you want to see this in high-resolution, you can go HERE ---> [link]. You can also find it on Youtube here ---> [link]

- New 2011 Version!

I first got this idea when I came up with the Holiday House Tour project (which turned out to be an epic failure--but that's another story). Since I didn't have a pretty house to showcase, I thought I would pixellate one with fancy lighting and lawn ornaments. Then I got further inspiration from the many videos of actual houselight displays on YouTube. I wanted to tackle the challenge of creating a pixel-house light display choreographed to music. Since I'm an emoticonist, I wanted to tie-in emotes, thus the smaller house size.

This project was a true collaboration with *Ravenswd. I did the art and choreographed the lighting effects to the music. He is the one who put together the various pieces of animation, figured out most of the light timing, and made it sound pretty--which was no easy task. Thank goodness Jim is a math whiz, because it helped a ton with the timing. Still, there were parts of the song that drove us nuts trying to get it timed perfect with the lights.

The art is all mine, every pixel. Even the emote Santa is a blown-up version of my emote here ---> [link] The art was done entirely in Paint Shop Pro and Animation Shop, which are my preferred programs for emoticons. Though I worked with tons of layers, I created separate frames for each single and combination of lighting elements. While this took a lot of work, it helped immensely when putting the animation together, as frames could be moved around and switched out easily.

The music is "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" by Tchaikovsky. This version is performed by the amazing Kevin McLeod of the site Incompetech.com. If you frequent YouTube, you have probably heard his work, as Kevin has a large collection of original music he makes available under Creative Commons and is used widely by independent film makers. He is pure awesomesauce, so be sure to check out his website ---> [link]

The original animated gif (before conversion to Flash) is 575 frames. Since we could only work on it a bit here and there, it took us about 3 weeks to do it. I can't even tell you how many hours total, because we stopped counting after a while. Let's just say A LOT. The music part of the video is 1 minute 45 seconds, which is good, because any longer would have killed us.

That's it. If you like it, be sure to go by *Ravenswd and show him some love.

Oh, and for our die-hard fans...yes, the house is a version of the K's house from BMW. And that is Jim and me in emote version after the credits.

*** Note, you MAY use this video on and off deviantART, without permission. The only thing we insist on is that you do not edit the video at all, and that the credit info at the end remains in-tact. Otherwise, feel free to share it, post it on your website, etc! ***